


the first scene, forever

by mismatched (miscalculated)



Series: standby, one-two, and action [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Archaic thoughts about gender roles, Biphobia, Future Fic, Homophobia, Infidelity, Internalized Biphobia, M/M, Misogynistic Terms, Seventeen was short-lived
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23136856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miscalculated/pseuds/mismatched
Summary: “I wanted to hate you after you disappeared. But I kept thinking about you at night. I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until I got myself off — "-Lee Jihoon keeps playing the same scene in his head over and over: the one where he fucked up, Lee Seokmin recounted his heartbreak, and there was a silver band on his left ring finger.For most, there is no happy ending.
Relationships: Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Lee Seokmin | DK
Series: standby, one-two, and action [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663093
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	the first scene, forever

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, all! 
> 
> Just wanted to give a quick heads up to check the tags; there are misogynistic terms, archaic ideas about gender roles, and internalized biphobia. The ideas expressed in this fic are not my own, nor are they meant to represent the real people or their values. 
> 
> Thanks for reading.

Jihoon sees it playing every time he closes his eyes, behind his eyelids, like a movie. Over and over, from the beginning: the empty bar, the button down shirt Seokmin was wearing, the tight, pitying smile spread across his lips when Jihoon told him he was the first, the only. “The only?” Seokmin had asked, paused to contemplate. Then his expression softened, saying that he finally understood, when Jihoon didn’t answer and just stared.

“ — man,” Seokmin confirmed. It was a whisper, barely heard over the jazz playing, but Jihoon heard it as if Seokmin had shouted. The intricate details become more and more hazy as the days peel by, but Jihoon can make out the essentials. The way Seokmin sat at the bar, one hand holding his glass of wine by the stem, index finger tapping against the rim like it did when he sang. His slicked back side part, so jarringly professional that, upon first inspection, Jihoon wasn’t sure if this was the same Seokmin he always knew. His black slacks, tan oxfords, the dull lights and light chatter, and — more than anything else, almost blinding in its glow — the silver band on his ring finger.

The silver band on his ring finger. His happy ending.

“You don’t fall in love with people,” Seokmin said. There was the tight, pitying smile. “You fall in love with voices, Jihoon.”

Jihoon loved Seokmin before he knew him. He was there through Seokmin’s auditions, there when Seokmin sang so soulfully he knew he loved him right then and there. Then, things started to fall into place, building up to the climax: the conception of the band, Jihoon’s promotion as producer, the endless lines that Jihoon fought for Seokmin to get just to hear that voice again and again. Seokmin’s rifts, his crescendo, the way he sang from his chest for power, through his head for the notes too high for most men to reach. Every inch of Jihoon’s body vibrated with warmth when he listened, no matter how many years peeled by.

Seokmin was his first and only. The first man he loved, before he knew it was possible for him to love another man, the first man to open him up and replace his insides with Seokmin. Hushed, hurried fucks in hotel rooms when their bandmates were sleeping and even longer nights in the studio, singing and fucking and Jihoon’s entire body vibrating with the warmth of Seokmin on him, inside of him. Only on his lonely days, alone with his thoughts, did he have the mind to feel ashamed or embarrassed.

His happy ending dematerialized with the disbandment of the band. Three years felt like one month. Losing the band meant losing his mind, and it gave him more time to fill the gaps that were once filled with work with shame and guilt instead. He withdrew from the world and from Seokmin, met every concern with silence and anger. He ruminated over innocuous details. Why did he let himself lie so pliantly, so submissively, while Seokmin took him? Why did he let himself become somebody’s woman? He skimmed through all those damned hotel nights in his mind, when he had his face in the pillow, arms folded behind the small of his back, moaning like a whore as Seokmin slid into him from behind.

Maybe he did fall in love with voices. When Seokmin lost the band and therefore his voice, it was as if Jihoon snapped out of a three-year daze. He told a man he loved him. He let a man hold him down and spread him open. His first and his only.

“I was stupid,” Jihoon had said in the bar, in the scene that always plays when he closes his eyes. “I never told you how I felt.” _And now it’s too late_ , he thought. As if on cue, Seokmin shifted his hand and the silver band glinted under the bar lights. _For most, there is no happy ending._

Seokmin shook his head, still sporting a smile that never reached his eyes. “You didn’t have to,” he said. He lifted the glass and took another sip of his wine.

But, he did. And he knew Seokmin felt it, too; he needed that closure. All these years later, both men falling into their careers and their separate lives, it still gnawed away at him — _why_? So when Jihoon opened his work email and saw the message from a Lee Seokmin, asking to have a drink and a chat at a bar, Jihoon knew what this meant. Seokmin was seeking the answer to the ‘why’, to the reason Jihoon set fire to their future. Not for reconciliation, but for peace of mind.

“I know it doesn’t matter or change anything now,” Jihoon said. “But I made so many mistakes, and. And I know can never fix them.” He played with his own glass of beer, mindlessly rubbing the condensation off the sides. “I wasn’t fair to you. Not like she is.”

Seokmin’s empty smile fell when he answered a quick, curt, “Don’t do that.” Jihoon looked through his ink black fringe at him. “Don’t do that _not like she_ _is_ bullshit. You don’t know her — you don’t know.”

“What, I can’t talk about it?” Jihoon had countered. He felt the too-common rage sparking in his chest. “Is that not why we’re here? So you can tell me she’s picking up where I fell short? Congratulations on your marriage, Lee Seokmin. I’m sure your parents are proud.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered to me.” Seokmin didn’t match Jihoon’s anger. His tone remained low, steady. “They could’ve said or done what they wanted, but they don’t control my life.”

Jihoon rolled his eyes to this, gaze falling to his beer. “Wow — you’re so brave.” Like a fucking idiot, the burn of the anger brought on tears, and his vision blurred with it. “And I was weak, right?”

It got Seokmin to raise his voice — just a decimal, but louder nonetheless. “You haven’t changed, have you? It’s been four fucking years, Jihoon. I thought that because the band was gone, you didn’t need me anymore… I blamed myself for a _year_ after you left.”

Jihoon ran frustrated fingers through his hair, ruining his parted fringe.There was the guilt he would never be able to resolve. The ripples of his actions that followed Seokmin long after Jihoon moved away and went dark. And while he couldn’t bare looking in his parents’ face, less they somehow find out in his eyes that he’d been spending the past three years of his life getting fucked by another man, Seokmin was at home thinking of himself as the worst of the two. Jihoon would always be the worst.

“But it wasn’t me, was it?” Seokmin continued. “You were afraid of us being found out? You weren’t planning for the future, like my dumb ass, because you knew it’d be over when the band was over — right? With the no-dating rule gone?”

Once, Seokmin _was_ his future. Blinded by their success, Jihoon never bothered to ponder over what would happen when the band would come to its inevitable end. The only thing that mattered to him, then, was Seokmin’s voice, Seokmin’s sharp, sharp features, his tan skin and the way he grounded Jihoon when he felt he was losing himself. And the music he’d create, the way Seokmin would sing them on stage with a sea of people and bright lights stretched out around him — his own island.

“I didn’t want to be a secret.” Seokmin’s tone returned to a low whisper, now shaking with his breath. “But I was. You left it all behind and made me your secret. Forever.”

“It wasn’t supposed to end that way. I was supposed to take you with me.” Jihoon dared himself to look. He counted to three in his head, ran another frustrated hand through his hair, and then turned to look at Seokmin again, now with his entire body facing him. Seokmin’s stare was hard, but crumbling. “And I didn’t. Because I was a coward.”

“And you still are.”

“I answered your email. I’m here.” He tried to will his tears away, albeit he knew his eyes were visibly glassy. “You’re married and this time I’m the one that’s left behind.”

Seokmin looked at him, face tight, sharp features glowing under the lights. He hadn’t changed in years. Still handsome, still tan and broad. “I never left you behind,” he answered. “I moved on.”

Jihoon may still be weak, and he may still be the coward he was four years ago. But what he knew for certain was that he was still selfish. He looked at Seokmin in that bar, the white button up and the black slacks and the silver band, and he wanted him. He desired him, so shamelessly possessive and resolute. “I did change,” he’d said to Seokmin’s lips. “You said I’m the same, but I’m not.” He leaned forward, quickly closing the space between their bodies and their faces before he had the chance to think better of it.

Then he was kissing Seokmin in the middle of the bar. Seokmin remained motionless, but pliant, as Jihoon took that razor-sharp jaw into his hands and slid his tongue between his lips. He licked into him, into the heat, letting it warm him like it did before he had let it all go. Fuck the bartender, fuck the sparse scatter of customers, fuck the world — for those few seconds, Seokmin belonged to him, and he didn’t give a shit if anybody protested.

That period in his life, when he’d abandoned his stupid pride and ideas of what it meant to be masculine, let Seokmin control him as he controlled the fate of the band, he learned how to give, not how to take. And Seokmin was docile in every aspect of his life except when he had Jihoon in his bed; the further they progressed, the more Seokmin took. He was surprisingly strong, moving and shifting Jihoon’s slighter frame as he saw fit. Over, onto his back, legs shoved up towards his chin; onto his stomach, hips pulled up and face pushed into the pillow to muffle his moans; up onto his lap, sinking Jihoon down onto his dick in one fell swoop, his other hand holding Jihoon’s mouth closed.

Jihoon gave himself to Seokmin, because he loved not only his voice, but everything that Seokmin was. The shame came later. He didn’t fall in love with a voice.

The kiss ended when Jihoon wanted it to end. This time, he took and Seokmin gave.

He moved back onto his stool, pressed his hands between his knees. There was a pause as they both contemplated one another, Seokmin’s face expressionless and Jihoon’s carefully blasé. He could see the bartender stealing glances at them from his periphery. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you needed. But I’m glad you got your happy ending.” _And that I got what I deserved_.

Seokmin rubbed at his lips with his fingertips and turned back towards his the bar. “You always do that. Apologizing.”

“It’s the only thing I can do. I can’t change the past — no matter how much I wish I could.” He took in a sharp inhale, begging himself to do the mature thing. No more selfishness. Starting now. “So. Your future. What’s her name?”

Hae-won. She and Seokmin met backstage at an award show. She was an up and coming actress and he was that main vocalist from that one band that disbanded one year prior. She called him the man with the ‘voice of an angel’ and he had laughed at how blunt she was. She watched him win an award for Best Up and Coming Vocalist and he watched her lose the award for Best New Face to a more established actress. They talked everyday after exchanging numbers, half a year later they were dating, and two more years later he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. His happy ending.

A year of mourning the death of one relationship. Then, the birth of a new one. One he could take home to his parents without fear or shame. Fuck, it hurt.

“Thinking of having kids?” Jihoon asked over the growing lump in his throat.

“We’ve only been married for, like, 7 months,” Seokmin answered. “And we want to work on our careers more before we think about that. Our parents agree.”

Jihoon nodded at this. “Smart.”

Seokmin asked him about his current endeavors, and Jihoon said a brief, “Just work. I compose and produce music for a couple of different bands.” He paused. “And no, I’m not seeing anybody. I was, a couple of times, but. Yeah.” He didn’t need to finish that thought. Seokmin knew.

It was a strange, unnervingly normal turn to their conversation. Seokmin recounted the times he met up with or ran into their ex-bandmates, told Jihoon he was still close friends with Seungkwan and Hansol, that they were both in his wedding. Seungkwan sang for them when they had their first dance as husband and wife, Hansol was the DJ for the rest of the evening.

“They asked about you,” Seokmin laughed, wry. “Asked if you were alright. I told ‘em I hadn’t spoken to you since Seventeen broke up.

More guilt, more shame. “I kept in touch with Mingyu on and off,” Jihoon said. “And Jeonghan.”

“Seungkwan asked what happened to us. That nosy fucker is really sharp sometimes.” The smile that never reached his eyes was back, his hands pushing his wine glass back and forth. “He told me he knew we were really, really close.”

Jihoon felt his heart drop into his chest. “What did you tell him?”

Seokmin shrugged. “The truth. That we had a big fight that we couldn’t come back from… and then. And then you vanished.”

Their final fight was in their shared dorm room, actually, a week before their company would break the news that Seventeen was over. They were packing, preparing to return to their respective homes, and Jihoon had gone silent on Seokmin for the past few days. Every time he looked at him he’d remember his shame, how he’d beg for him and give and give in and surrender himself. He had nothing else to give.

Seokmin demanded answers. “That’s it?” he’d asked. _Yeah_ , Jihoon had said. The beginning of the end.

“I think he felt something,” Seokmin continued. “He gave me this look I’d never seen him have before.”

Jihoon tittered. “A nosy fucker for sure.”

“I mean, I didn’t really understand it, either,” Seokmin said. “I still don’t. Not fully.” He side-glanced at Jihoon. “What was it? Because you were afraid of what people would say? Or it was never love to you?”

“I loved you.” Jihoon’s response was immediate, firm. “ _You_. Not just what you could do.” With that out of the way, he needed a drink for what was to come: unveiling the most vulnerable parts of him. Being transparent about the internal war he’d put himself through for the first time in nearly a decade. If nothing else, Seokmin deserved the truth; he spent a year convinced the truth was that he just wasn’t enough.

He grabbed his nearly untouched glass of beer and took a hearty gulp. Seokmin watched him in silence as he backed it, bit by bit. When he polished it off, the bartender wearily approached the two and asked if he wanted another. Jihoon nodded, and she took his empty glass and soon replaced it with another.

“Okay,” he said to his reflection on the new glass. “I was afraid. More like… what it meant about me than what other people would think.” He picked up the beer and took a swig. This was going to be harder than he thought, with Seokmin’s eyes burning a hole in the side of his face. “There was definitely a part of me that was worried sick over what our bandmates, or… what my parents would think of me.”

“You thought they’d be disgusted.” Not a question, but a statement.

Jihoon’s cheeks burned in the discomfort. “Yes,” he started. “That. I disgusted myself the most, though. For… loving you. Not, like _you_ specifically, like,” — _a man_ , Seokmin supplied. — “Yeah. And loving, um. It.”

Seokmin blinked, slow. “It.”

Fuck. He was really doing this. Really, truly, opening his mouth to say this to another human being. There was safety in keeping it locked within his mind, swirling with his thoughts; out loud, it wasn’t his anymore. He’d have no control over where it went. That was the scariest part.

Jihoon bowed his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “How you made me feel,” he whispered. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

After a moment of muted jazz music, he could hear Seokmin let out a huff of air. “That’s not any else’s business but ours, Jihoon. What we did.. it will always be ours alone.”

“I know no one will know what we do — did — in bed,” Jihoon said. “The problem is that _I_ know what we did in bed.”

“But you liked it,” Seokmin said. “Right?”

Jihoon gave a jolted nod. So brief, it was easy to miss. “Yeah.”

Seokmin reached out and gripped his shoulder; Jihoon didn’t expect it, his heart leaping up into his throat at the feeling. It was the second time they’d touched that night. He looked up, catching Seokmin’s sharp eyes. He could drown in them.

“I liked it, too,” Seokmin’s voice fell, suddenly breathless. “You moan like you sing, y’know that? High and soft. I never forgot that.”

Jesus Christ. The beer was warming his limbs, but Seokmin’s words were warming him low, low, low in his stomach. “Seokmin,” he sounded wounded. There was a sick tilt to the fact that Seokmin’s left hand was on his shoulder, the silver band digging into him through his coat.

“If you’re disgusted with yourself, be disgusted with me, too,” Seokmin said. “Because you were incredible. Jihoon. The way you’d lie down and look at me?”

“Stop,” Jihoon tried.

“I wanted to hate you after you disappeared. But I kept thinking about you at night. I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep until I got myself off — “

“ _Stop_.”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about that night you held up your own legs, and you asked me to choke — “

“Seokmin, please. Please,” Jihoon breathed. “I can’t do this.”

Seokmin let his grip slide off Jihoon’s shoulder. “Too much?”

“Not enough,” Jihoon admitted, voice cracking. And he wasn’t sure if he wanted to relive his most vulnerable moments of their sex life. When he did things he thought he’d never do, said things he wouldn’t dare to repeat aloud.

That seemed to remind Seokmin where he was. He picked his glass up. “Sorry.” He finished the remains of his wine in one swallow. “It’s wrong, and I’m being selfish.”

“Not as selfish as the kiss,” Jihoon answered, still trying hard to compose himself. He smoothed the lapels of his trench coat down, fixed his fringe. Neither helped with how frazzled he felt, wanting so badly what he couldn’t have. “M’sorry, too.”

“Then we’re both selfish. So there.”

Both men laughed briefly. It was Seokmin’s first time laughing since they reunited, and Jihoon drank as much of Seokmin’s megawatt smile as he could before it left as quickly as it came.

“Would it be bad to ask,” Seokmin started. “If you ever wanted to meet her? I mean. Meet Hae-won.”

A strange thing to ask right after the verbal porn. Jihoon froze, once again vowed himself to be mature and do the right thing, said, “I wouldn’t mind meeting the woman that stole your heart.” Regardless, it hurt. A sharp pain, straight through his chest, reminding him that what was in the past was (and forever will be) in the past. Seokmin wanted closure to move on emotionally — and to maybe rebuild their relationship. Not to reconcile as lovers. As friends.

He didn’t think it’d ever hurt this badly. Fuck.

An uncomfortable silence followed. The bartender returned to take Seokmin’s empty flute, asked him if he wanted another and nodded and left when he said he was done drinking.

“We should probably go,” Jihoon said when she’d gone to help a couple at the other corner of the bar. “Your wife must be wondering why you’re out so late.”

Seokmin fished his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen on. 11:43PM. From Jihoon’s periphery, he could see a few notifications from a ‘Hae Hae’. Definitely his wife. Seokmin tapped the notification, scanned the content. “You’re right,” he said. “I should go.”

Jihoon waited politely as Seokmin typed a response to his Hae Hae. Then, they closed their tabs and stood up from the bar.

“Hey,” Seokmin said. “Thanks for coming. Really. I was, like, 100 percent sure that you’d never respond.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon supplied, rubbing his palms down the sides of his coat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He almost didn’t, in actuality. But something told him that if he didn’t, he’d have yet another thing to regret for the rest of his life.

“I’ll invite you to dinner with us sometime. Maybe we can meet up with Seungkwan and Hansol, too. They miss you like crazy, y’know.”

Jihoon’s mouth pulled into a cross between a smile and a grimace. “Maybe. I gotta see how this dinner goes, first.”

Seokmin laughed, eyes turning to crescent moons, another megawatt smile. “Yeah. Right.”

There was a slight hesitation before he pulled Jihoon into a hug, like they’ve always been friends and he hadn’t gotten his heart broken by him once. Jihoon hugged him back, leaned his head against his warm chest, knew it was karmic justice the way his own was breaking.

The movie ends when Seokmin walked out of the bar while tapping Hae-won’s name and putting his phone to his ear. Jihoon stood in the empty bar, his own breathing heavy in his ears, and waited until Seokmin was out of sight before he let himself fall apart.

End scene.

And every time he closes his eyes, there it is again: the empty bar, the button down shirt Seokmin was wearing, the tight, pitying smile spread across his lips when Jihoon told him he was the first, the only.


End file.
